Shadowing Practice: 4 Sales Questions So Good Prospects Will Close Themselves - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Most salespeople talk their way out of the sale.
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Most salespeople talk their way out of the sale.
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So what I'm going to show you today are four questions you can start using like right now with what you sell that will reframe your prospects and get them to chase you and actually close themselves.
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Now I want you to write this down.
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This is called precision probing.
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So write down NEPQ precision probing.
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Now when are you going to use these questions I'm going to show you.
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I'm going to show you why you're going to use them and then I'm actually going to role play the questions for you.
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So you want to pay attention to what I'm going to go over.
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Number one, when do you use these probing questions?
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When you're building what's called the gap.
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Now, what do I mean by building the gap?
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Building the gap from where the prospect is, current situation to where they want to be.
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What does the future look like once the newfound problems, that's the gap, are actually solved or emotional needs.
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So when you're building the gap, I need to probe to open up.
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These are called problem awareness questions.
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Write that down.
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Also, I can use probing questions when I'm future pacing.
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How do I get them to see what the future looks and feels like once the newfound problems are solved?
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Those are primarily in solution awareness questions.
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I might give you a few examples of those.
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I can also use them in consequence questions that get them to see what the consequences are if they don't change, means if they don't get their problem solved by your product or your service.
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I can even use them in my presentation.
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The important part here that you have to master is why do you have to use these?
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Okay.
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Now this is really important for you.
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Okay.
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Do you want to make more sales than you are now, which I know you do.
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That's why you follow me.
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You might even be one of our clients.
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That's why you're here.
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Why do I use these?
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Because I have to help the prospect relive their pain of their current situation.
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Now this drives them to change.
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Pain drives change.
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You probably heard it.
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No pain, no gain, right?
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Same thing in sales.
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Help them relive the pain, causes them to feel urgency to want to change.
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Number two, they tell themselves why they want to change.
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How persuasive is it if you tell your prospect why they need to change and by what you're offering compared to you mastering how to reframe those statements into questions where the prospect tells you why they need to change.
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More importantly, it tells themselves.
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Think about that.
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I'm going to show you some examples of that.
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And number three causes them to go below the surface.
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You always hear about, hey, I need to learn how to get them to open up.
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Well, if we can't get them to open up, they don't feel any pain.
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Okay.
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They don't open up emotionally.
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They don't typically buy.
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You've always heard this.
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I know you understand this.
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Human beings buy on what?
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Logic or emotion?
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100% emotion.
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Brain studies prove that.
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There's no debate on that.
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Okay.
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So this is why you want to use these questions I'm about to show you.
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Okay, let me show you a few examples and I want you to write this down.
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Of course, you can keep watching this over and over on repeat.
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Okay.
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Let's say a prospect and you hear this all the time.
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You know what I'm talking about.
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Let's say a prospect gives you some type of an emotional word.
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Okay.
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So they're talking about one of their problems and they say, oh my gosh, it's just causing me so much anxiety or, you know, this is causing me a lot of tension at work.
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Like if you sell to a company or this is causing, I'm just worried at night.
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You know, let's say if you're selling an alarm system to a homeowner or, you know, oh my gosh, it's just causing so much pressure for me at my job.
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I can't figure out how to market, you know, get more clients if you're selling to like a small business.
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Okay.
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You can take that one emotional word, let's say it's stressed and you can quite literally just repeat it back.
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So when the prospect says, I'm just feeling a lot of stress, stress, that's all you have to do.
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Okay.
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Now I want you not to just go practice this on your prospect today.
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I want you to practice on a family member or a spouse or one of your kids.
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When they give you any type of an emotional word, you just repeat it back.
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Stress or concerned or worried.
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Okay.
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Now notice how my facial expressions show that I'm what?
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Concerned.
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Like I have empathy for you.
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Okay.
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That is a concern tone.
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So watch how the prospect opens up emotionally.
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Now, this is an example of what's called an NEPQ probing question.
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Now, if you're not one of our clients, you're not familiar with NEPQ.
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NEPQ stands for Neural Emotional Persuasion Questioning.
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It's my methodology I developed going to school.
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I studied behavioral science to become a psychologist, randomly got into sales, and here you are.
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Had an 18-year sales career, retired.
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About a year later, started my own company as a sales trainer.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So that's NEPQ probing question.
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So I just got to repeat back the emotional word, put your hand on your chest, even if you're on the phone, okay, because your body language affects your what?
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Your tonality.
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Very important for you to understand.
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Now, okay, let's say the prospect comes back and says something like this.
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Oh, stressed?
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Oh yeah.
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I mean, just the other day, it happened again when, and they start going into explaining what they mean by stress.
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Now, why does this work so well?
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I want to make sure you understand that.
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When you ask this type of probing question, just repeat back an emotion.
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What instantly happens in your prospect's subconscious part of their brain is it basically says, oh, he didn't understand what I meant by stress.
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I need to explain that better.
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Are you getting what I'm throwing down to you?
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Okay.
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So they don't consciously do that subconsciously.
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Oh, he didn't, he or she didn't understand what I meant by that.
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I need to expand that.
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And that's when they start to open up.
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Now, do you see how I'm getting them to open up emotionally?
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Because we're focused on a what?
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An emotion.
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You see what I'm talking about there?
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Okay.
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That's very important for you to understand.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Just Saturday.
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It happened when and they start expanding on that.
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See how I'm starting to get them to what?
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relive their pain of their past history right here okay now I immediately want to ask another probing question right here I want to find out how long that's been going on okay so they say yeah just said our date happened when blah blah blah how long has it been going on for now why would I ask them how long that's been going on for you ask them that type of question because when they say oh it's been going for a month or six months or a year, it suddenly starts to get them to think, oh my gosh, I've had the same problem for this long.
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So when the prospect tells you how long it's been going on for, you immediately come back.
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Let's say they said it's been going on for six months.
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Okay.
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So this has been going on for six months.
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Has that had an impact on you?
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Now it's important.
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You're probably wondering like, why is he slowing down?
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What's going on?
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write this down.
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This is called verbal pacing.
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All right.
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Most salespeople, if they ask this type of question, it doesn't land because they ask it too fast.
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So if I asked it like this, so this has been going on for the past six months.
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Has it had an impact on you?
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First of all, you're asking it too fast.
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So when you ask a question too fast, it gives your prospect no time to internalize and think deeper about what you're asking.
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So they're going to give you a surface level knee jerk answer.
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And most of the time they'll come back like, yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's not been that good or yeah, it's not that bad because you're asking it too fast.
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They don't internalize it.
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Hey guys, Jeremy Miner here.
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Look, a lot of you leave comments wanting me to help you somewhere.
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So the easiest way to get ahold of me, the quickest way is to text me.
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So text me right now.
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It's 480-637-2944.
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So 480-637-2944.
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Listen, I started this company to help you learn how to close more deals, but do it the right way.
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Text me right now.
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Let's get back to the training video.
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Okay.
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So let's say the prospect comes back and they say, oh, I mean, you have no idea.
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Okay.
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And they're kind of vague.
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What can I do?
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I can ask another probing question.
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I can lean in and say, in what way though?
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Oh, you have no idea, Jeremy.
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In what way?
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Well, see, get it.
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See how I'm getting them to open up and expand.
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I'm probing deeper.
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I'm bringing up more emotion.
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Are you getting this?
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Okay.
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All right.
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Let's keep going here.
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So if I see, if you see them and they're emotionally opening up to you after you probe and they're like, oh my gosh, this is so bad and the stress, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I can immediately jump in and say, what's that doing to you?
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Now, notice how my tone shifted.
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Did you feel it?
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What I just did there.
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And now this is a role play.
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So obviously, I'm showing you what to do here in a real life sales situation.
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The prospect's not going to know that.
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Okay.
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but I'm using a concern tone there, a tone that shows empathy.
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Now, why is that critical for you to master?
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Because your tone is how the prospect interprets your intention behind everything you say and ask.
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That's how they interpret why you're asking.
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So if I ask this question, oh, what's it doing to you?
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Oh, it's not doing that much unless they're laid down.
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But if I immediately go like this, what's that doing to you?
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See, notice my facial expression shows that I'm concerned for you.
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I show empathy.
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Now, does that lower trust that they have for you?
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Or do you feel that might raise trust if they feel like you're concerned for them?
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See the difference there, okay?
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Now, let's say the prospect says something like this.
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Here's another example of how to probe, all right?
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yeah, you know, we're having some problems with XYZ and ABC.
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Okay.
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Now a lot of salespeople we see before they come into our training programs, they'll get that answer.
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We've had some problems with this and that, and they think that that's the prospect opening up by just telling them the problems.
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And then they go through like how they solve them.
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This is surface level stuff.
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Okay.
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you got to find out what's behind those problems, what's causing the problems, the root cause, and how those problems are affecting them, even personally, even if you're selling to a fortune 100 CEO.
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That's the difference, okay?
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So I need to get them to relive the pain of this, not just tell me what the problem is.
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Because if they tell you the problem, that's not really pain.
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You're only going to get the lay downs this way.
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And I know you want to master this, don't you?
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Okay.
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So I might say, can you give me a specific example of when that actually happened?
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See, I'm getting them to relive their pain because now they're telling me, oh, just last week or a month ago, this happened and this happened.
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See how I'm drawing them back into their pain of their past history.
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You getting this?
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Okay.
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What am I going to do there after I find out?
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Remember, here's the probe.
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How long has that been going on for?
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Okay.
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Oh, it's been going on for about...
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How is that affecting you personally?
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Okay.
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How long has it been going on for?
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Don't ask it like that.
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Okay.
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And then how is that affecting you personally though?
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Even if I'm selling to a corporation, let's say I'm selling to a department head.
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Has that had an impact on you?
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Okay.
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See, I'm doing that now.
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Am I going to probe and ask those feeling questions in the first two, three, four or five minutes of a conversation?
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Unlikely because how much trust or credibility do you have by that point?
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Not much.
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You haven't built a big enough gap.
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When I build a big enough gap, I am allowed to ask those type of feeling questions because there's more trust there because I've built a gap.
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Okay.
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Now, if you're committed to mastery or if you just got a question, text us.
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Okay.
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I'll give you actually a number you can text me at that.
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I actually respond along with some sales trainers that we have.
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So 480-637-2944.
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Go ahead and text me any questions you have or if you're like, I'm not sure how to do this for my industry and we'll get back to you.
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Sometimes it takes one to two business days.
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I just wanna be realistic.
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Oh, go ahead and hit the subscribe button if you haven't subscribed because you're probably gonna wanna learn what I'm gonna show you in these training videos.
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Hope that helped today.
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Hit subscribe.
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I'll see you soon.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, learners will focus on advanced questioning techniques that can be used in sales. By understanding and practicing how to frame questions effectively, learners will gain insights into the importance of "precision probing." This exercise is designed to enhance your speaking skills and improve English pronunciation through shadow speech techniques. By mastering how to engage prospects using specific questions, you can not only facilitate conversations but also learn to express ideas more clearly and confidently.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Precision probing - A technique used to ask targeted questions that guide discussions toward specific outcomes.
- Building the gap - Creating awareness of the difference between a prospect's current situation and their desired future.
- Problem awareness questions - Questions aimed at helping prospects recognize their existing challenges.
- Solution awareness questions - Questions that encourage prospects to envision the benefits after solving their problems.
- Consequence questions - Questions that prompt prospects to think about the negative effects of not addressing their issues.
- Emotional needs - The feelings and motivations that drive a prospect's decision-making process.
- Urgency - The sense of immediacy that prompts a prospect to make a decision quickly.
Practice Tips
To maximize your learning experience, consider using shadowing techniques with this video. Start by shadow speaking the presenter’s questions at a slower pace before gradually increasing to the original speed. Pay attention to the intonation, stress, and rhythm in the speaker's voice to improve English pronunciation. Because the presenter speaks with a clear and engaging tone, this is an ideal shadowing site for both beginners and intermediate learners.
As you practice, repeat the questions aloud and try to rephrase them in your own words. This not only enhances your understanding but also prepares you for real-life applications, such as in IELTS speaking practice. Incorporate pauses in your speech to mimic natural conversation flow, focusing on building empathy and engagement with your audience. Regularly practicing this way will develop your confidence and fluency, making your speech more persuasive and impactful.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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